Hot on the heels of Comic-Con comes the next unboxing in the Loot Crate Wars series. For July and August, the guys at Loot Crate have created a two part crate. First, July kicked things off with Villains as its theme which started with an awesome super foe themed trailer on Loot Crate’s own YouTube channel. In it is some of the baddest of the bad as you’ll see in the unboxing video below.

Most notable of the Crate (while still trying to keep the article spoiler-free-ish) is a special variant comic for a number one that just came out from Marvel. Loot Crate’s subscriber base has gotten so big that just by putting it in the July crate, they literally doubled the preorders of the book.

Guardians of the Galaxy is the summer blockbuster I’ve been waiting for for longer than I can remember.

The usual adjectives of effusive praise are appropriate: funny, clever, touching, and, of course, fun. While Marvel Studios has certainly found the formula for successful films, they’ve been progressively more and more serious and, worse, self-important. Guardians has the good sense to mock itself and its concept, which is likely due in large part to its star, Parks & Recreation‘s Chris Pratt, and writer/director James Gunn (Slither), and perhaps almost as large a part being that it’s relatively free of the Marvel Universe around which every other film it’s made snugly revolves. I doubt we’d see even Tony Stark using a space-rat as a make-believe microphone, especially in the first two minutes.

So Gunn and Pratt bring a delightfully refreshing sense of self deprecation to their film, Pratt playing the somewhat well-known Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord, intergalactic swashbuckler. The promotional writeups describe him as a mix of Han Solo and Marty McFly, but I think Indiana Jones may be more appropriate, since they’re both adept at getting into and out of particularly sticky situations.

This time Star-Lord has snatched an orb of potentially unimaginable power, which puts him in the sights of nearly everyone across the galaxy, from assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to planetary ravager Ronan (Lee Pace) to Yondu (Michael Rooker), Star-Lord’s kind-of adopted father, to genetically modified raccoon Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and his Ent-ian-ish pal Groot (Vin Diesel). After a three-way battle on the universal capital planet, the four are imprisoned and…blah, blah, blah. They team up, everyone tries to kill them, and so on.

In 1977, at the age of 8, I sat in a theater and experienced the awe and wonder that was Star Wars. At the time, no one had any idea what kind of cultural significance it would have or what it would mean for cinema in general and science-fiction films in particular. Though there have been many books, essays and college theses that have attempted to quantify and examine those impacts over the years, at age 8 I didn’t really care about such things.

If I’m being completely honest I should admit that I still don’t, I just remember sitting in the darkened theater being completely pulled into a new and completely realized new universe of awe and wonder and being completely captivated and immeasurably entertained by it. Thanks to James Gunn and Guardians of the Galaxy, that feeling has returned 37 years later.

It’s one of those things you would have figured would be a bigger deal but two weeks later and there hasn’t been a peep heard about it. Maybe I am running in the wrong circles or it really is telling of the popularity of Disney Infinity (or lack there of) but this should have been bigger news to the gaming and geek worlds.

Marvel has unleashed a trailer on their YouTube channel that gives a pretty good indication of a certain star spangled super hero making his way alongside the cast of Disney Infinity. Without getting tacky and talking about the “infinite” possibilities, it is pretty cool to hear this as one of the more public facing interactions between Disney and Marvel since the acquisition.

For those who don’t know, Disney Infinity is a video game that uses smart toy technology similar to that of Skylanders where players place figures on an e-reader stand which causes the character to appear in game as well. This upcoming expansion of characters will be one of the first times where a player can have Marvel characters interacting with those of Disney in Disney worlds as well.

So far, Pirates of the Caribbean, Monsters University and The Incredibles are all a part of Disney Infinity but now we are waiting for the moment where we can have Captain America go head to head with Darth Vader. Come on Disney. You own it all. There is no reason not to make it happen. It is literally the option to print money…

Last night we went to an early showing of Thor: The Dark World and there are definitely some split opinions from the Whiskey & Waffles team on this one. In the video after the break, you’ll see WallE’s take on it.

A for me, I will say I didn’t dislike Thor: The Dark World. It is a solid enough super hero movie, along the same lines as Iron Man 3 and certainly better than the abomination that was The Wolverine. There are some fun moments but two things really stood out that got in my way of fully embracing the movie(and don’t worry, I’ll keep it spoiler free).

Since The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is headed to theaters in spring of 2014, it isn’t much of a shock that its gaming counterpart will be coming out around the same time as well. From what we’ve heard so far from the folks at Beenox and Activision who revealed the trailer at New York Comic Con is that it will release for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, XBox One, XBox 360, PC, Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.

As you’ll see in the press release attached below, there isn’t mention on a split development between the current gen and next gen systems which leads one to believe that the PlayStation 4 and XBox One versions may be just slightly better graphics but with no real change in the gameplay.

In the trailer, you’ll also notice a new villain that doesn’t match up to any characters yet announced in the movie. Half way through, you’ll see a very light skinned character, similar to that of a gang member. with tattoos on his body and his face wrapped in a scarf of some sort.

You then see a second similar gang member attack another character who is holding a kukri style machete. These may be just some gangs that Spider-Man encounters in the game, or this scarved character may be one of The Amazing Spider-Man movie style analogs of an existing character like Carrion.

A movie can often only be as good as its villain. Luckily for Marvel, Tom Hiddleston stole the show in both Thor and The Avengers as the god of mischief Loki. With Loki appearing to play a large part in Thor: The Dark World, it is time for someone else to step up to take the fight to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in the titular role as Ultron.

Most likely in the style of Darth Vader being voiced by one actor and having another inside the suit, James Spader has been formally cast as the villain in Marvel’s movie franchise. Hopefully there will be a way for the character to emote facially to capture the talents of Spader unlike Willem Defoe’s role in Spider-Man. Even though he appeared in the non-vampire slayer version of Lincoln, Spader has some geek cred going back almost twenty years to Stargate.

Still unnamed for Avengers: Age of Ultron are the actors behind Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. It will be interesting to see who gets cast as the brother and sister combo and if Marvel touches on their origin which includes a father who is tied to another Marvel franchise under the control of Fox. Personally, I vote for a real life brother and sister like Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal to make the awkward sexual tension between the characters that much stranger.

A select few saw, and most only heard about, the first peek at Guardians of the Galaxy when it was given at Comic-Con and part of the cast appeared on stage including Dave Bautista, Chris Pratt and a recently shaved headed Karen Gillan. But even though Drax, Starlord and Nebula were represented, there were a few characters vital to the Guardians of the Galaxy roster that were not present, notably Rocket Raccoon and Groot. Now while we weren’ t expecting to see a walking and talking raccoon and tree combo take the stage, it was possible that their voice actors could have shown up, but that wasn’t the case.

Yesterday, the internet nerd community went crazy with rumors of Vin Diesel getting the role of Groot. While it has been known that Diesel had spoken to Kevin Feige, it was said that Disney and Marvel might not be using him any time soon. Well this didn’t mean anything to the internet after Vin Diesel briefly changed his Facebook cover image to that of Groot for a few minutes before changing it back to an image of himself shortly after.

So if there was ever a reason to watch Once Upon a Time last night, we found it with the premiere trailer for the coming series, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And look who is back… Coulson! The man who started out as an unknown supporting role and quickly drew his own cult following to the point where he became the spark that brought the Avengers together against Loki is headlining this upcoming series. While there are theories about how Coulson beat death (and sorry but this late in the game, you aren’t allowed to call spoiler on me for it), he will be heading up the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

From the look of it, this isn’t going to strictly be a super hero story as Coulson and his team aren’t powered up heroes. They are going to need to rely on their varied skill sets to take on the emerging metahuman threats in their world. From the trailer, you may spy a certain African American character with super strength (who speculation is already pointing to be the Marvel movie continuity first appearance of Luke Cage).

One great aspect to the show can be the introduction of such characters to the movie continuity without forcing too much of the film to revolve around their origin and instead focusing on the team dynamic or maybe even provide Easter eggs for characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy before their theatrical debut.

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